T-Shirts & More
Order men's and women's T-Shirts, Sweatshirts, Aprons, Mugs, Caps, Tote Bags, Flasks, and more, all imprinted with the Pitmaster Club logo. There's even a spiral bound journal where you can make notes on your cooks.

Cool Embroidered Shirt
This beautifully embroidered shirt is the same one Meathead wears in public and on TV. It's wash and wear and doesn't need ironing (really!), but it is a soft cottonlike feel. Choice of four colors and both men's and women's.

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SPOTLIGHT

Some Of Our Favorite
Tools And Toys

Surely you know somebody who loves outdoor cooking who deserves a gift for the holidays, birthday, anniversary, or just for being wonderful. There he is, right in the mirror! Here are our selections of best ideas, all Platinum or Gold Medalists, listed by price.

If you have a Weber Kettle, you need the Slow 'N' Sear

Bring The Heat With Broil King Signet's Dual Tube Burners

The Broil King Signet 320 is a modestly priced, 3-burner gas grill that packs a lot of value and power under the hood. Broil King's proprietary, dual-tube burners get hot fast and are able to achieve high, searing temps that rival most comparatively priced gas grills. The quality cast aluminum housing carries a Limited Lifetime Warranty.

The Good-One Is A Superb Grill And A Superb Smoker All In One

The Good-One Open Range is a charcoal grill with an offset smoke chamber attached. It is dramatically different from a traditional offset smoker. The grill sits low in front and doubles as a firebox for the smoke chamber which is spliced on above and behind so it can work like a horizontal offset smoker only better. By placing the heat source behind and under the smokebox instead of off to the side, Open Range produces even temperature from left to right, something almost impossible to achieve with a standard barrel shaped offset.

Griddle And Deep Fryer All In One

The flat top does the burgers and the fryer does the fries. Use the griddle for bacon, eggs, and home fries. Or pancakes, fajitas, grilled cheese, you name it. Why stink up the house deep frying and spatter all over? Do your fried chicken and calamari outside. Blackstone's Rangetop Combo With Deep Fryer does it all. Plus it has a built in cutting board, garbage bag holder, and paper towel holder. An additional work table on the left side provides plenty of counter space.

The Pit Barrel Cooker May Be Too Easy

The PBC has a rabid cult following for good reason. It is absolutely positively without a doubt the best bargain on a smoker in the world. Period. This baby will cook circles around the cheap offset sideways barrel smokers in the hardware stores because temperature control is so much easier. Best of all, it is only 9 delivered to your door!

The Swiss Army Knife Of Thermometers

The smart folks at ThermoWorks have finally done it: The Swiss Army Knife of thermometers, two in one. Start with the industry standard food thermometer, the Thermapen MK4, (Platinum Medal winner) truly instant (2 to 3 seconds) precise (+ or – 0.7°F). Then they built in an infrared thermometer ideal for measuring the temps of pizza stones, griddles, and frying pans (also great for finding leaks around doors and windows in your house).

The Cool Kettle With The Hinged Hood We Always Wanted

Their NK22CK-C Charcoal Kettle Grill puts a few spins on the familiar kettle design. In fact, the hinged lid with a handle on the front, spins in a rotary motion 180 degrees. It's hard to beat a Weber kettle, but Napoleon holds its own and adds some unique features to make the NK22CK-C a viable alternative.

G&F Suede Welder's Gloves

Heat Resistant Gloves With Extra Long Sleeves Hold The Hot Stuff

If you're using oven mitts at the grill, it's time to trade up. Say hello to these suede welder's gloves. They're heat resistant enough to handle hot grill grates, and flexible enough to handle tongs. The extra long sleeves even let you reach deep into the firebox to move hot logs without getting burned. Our Fave.

GrillGrates Take Gas Grills To The Infrared Zone

GrillGrates(TM) amplify heat, prevent flareups, make flipping foods easier, keep small foods from committing suicide, kill hotspots, are easier to clean, flip over to make a fine griddle, and can be easily removed and moved from one grill to another. You can even throw wood chips, pellets, or sawdust between the rails and deliver a quick burst of smoke to whatever is above. Every gas grill needs them.

Our Favorite Backyard Smoker

The amazing Karubecue is the most innovative smoker in the world. The quality of meat from this machine is astonishing. At its crux is a patented firebox that burns logs above the cooking chamber and sucks heat and extremely clean blue smoke into the thermostat controlled oven. It is our favorite smoker, period.

Masterbuilt MPS 340/G ThermoTemp XL Propane Smoker

The First Propane Smoker With A Thermostat Makes This Baby Foolproof

Set ThermoTemp's dial from 175° to 350°F and the thermostat inside will adjust the burner just like an indoor kitchen oven. All you need to do is add wood to the tray above the burner to start smokin'.

Professional Steakhouse Knife Set

Our founder, Meathead, wanted the same steak knives used by steakhouses such as Peter Luger, Smith & Wollensky, Morton's, Kobe Club, Palm, and many others. So he located the manufacturer and had them stamp our name on some. They boast pointed, temper-ground, serrated, high-carbon stainless-steel, half-tang blades with excellent cutting edge ability. The beefy hardwood handle provides a comfortable grip secured by three hefty rivets. He has machine washed his more than 100 times. They have never rusted and they stay shiny without polishing. Please note that we do not make, sell, or distribute these knives, they just engrave them with our name.

Is This Superb Charcoal Grill A Kamado Killer?

The PK-360, with 360 square inches of cooking space, this rust free, cast aluminum charcoal grill is durable and easy to use. Four-way venting means it's easy to set up for two zone cooking with more control than single vent Kamado grills. It is much easier to set up for 2-zone cooking than any round kamado. Beautifully designed and completely portable. Meathead says it is his preferrred grill.

Finally, A Great Portable Pellet Smoker

Green Mountain's portable Davy Crockett Pellet Smoker is one mean tailgating and picnic machine. But it's also gaining popularity with people who want to add a small, set it and forget it pellet smoker to their backyard arsenal. And with their WiFi capabilities you can control and monitor Davy Crocket from your smart phone or laptop.

Well, the rotisserie is washed up and ready for two chickens I am going to spin for dinner tonight. The stainless spit rod on the OnlyFire rotisserie is very stout - no worry of that thing ever sagging with 2-3 birds on it! We will see how things go tonight... I did need to remove the grates to have room, and worry about room for a drip pan on the flavorizer bars. I think there is less vertical clearance on these Genesis II grills than on my 2002 Genesis model. I've not measured it, but eyeballing it it looks like less. And the newer style flavorizer bars are much taller.

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Adequate clearance was the issue I ran into with the E410 when I purchased the rotisserie around Thanksgiving. The design for the rotisserie seems like an afterthought by Weber. If you come up with an ingenious solution I’m all ears.

Willard, right now, I think I will be fine with a pork loin or roast. You are absolutely not going to spin a bird bigger than a 5 pound chicken on the Genesis II rotisserie, and it has to be trussed tightly. Last night, one of the birds had a dislocated hip or something that made it wider on one side, and it would hit the pan on every rotation. I ended up removing the drip pan, and the thicker parts of the bird ended up being in the area between flavorizer bars.

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That looks good. We have some yellow squash and zucchini that needs to be cooked. I'll talk to the wife about putting it in a drip pan under the chicken. Do you leave the veggies in the entire time the chicken is cooking?

Not necessarily. I think you said you were going to have your two side burners on and the middle two off. So your setup is different. I gotta keep an eye on them since the veggies are so close to the flames. I also add the veggies in stages if the veggies are going to cook at different rates.

Thanks Attjack and RonB - luck just might be needed, as dinner is running almost an hour behind schedule now! I work from a home office, figured it was a quick affair to wash up and rub down 2 fryers, stick them on the spit and get it spinning. WRONG!

My first disaster was realizing I needed some sort of trussing. So, out comes the butcher twine, I wrap some string haphazardly around legs and wings, throw it on, come back 5 minutes later... to find both drip pans in a crumpled up heap at the front of the grill, with the bird legs and wings flopping all over the place, hitting the flavorizer bars.

So... turn the flames off, cut all the string off, and rewrap things after looking at a couple of pictures on the internet. Doesn't quite work right as one bird came from the store with a detached thigh, so that leg quarter is flopping still. So, another wrap or two around. THEN, I realize nothing is hot. Out of gas! I grabbed the 20 pound tank from the Performer, which I use for the gas ignitor, and hook it up to the Genesis II, and we are spinning again with heat.

I'm not happy with the way these 4.5 or so pound birds (2 pack of organic chickens that the wife bought) are brushing the pans sitting on the flavorizer bars, and next time around, I may pull those out and put the drip pans on top of the burner tubes. We'll see how the chicken turns out. I'm going to add some squash and onion to the pans when there are about 30 minutes left in the cook. And hope the chicken trussing didn't fail again in the meantime!

I gotta find some better tips on how to truss a rotisserie chicken... in the meantime, we are spinning about an hour after I expected to be.

I need a Father's Day. So I can get grill/smoker gifts. Let's face it, you guys are tough to buy for. The stuff we (wives and family) think you need, like socks without holes in them, get accepted with a painful "grateful" grin.

Gosh darn. I want a rotisserie like jfmorris got, except for my charcoal grill. That said, I am enjoying my piece of jewelry from my husband for Mother's Day.

I can only imagine in some alternative universe, where two passionate cooks go down to the bbq store eagerly giving birth to their next baby grill or smoker. They put us on a reality TV show called One More Smoker Plus 8.

Then I woke up to my current nightmare. NO you can't have another cooker until I get my next Gucci purse. Uggg....

- Inferior trussing resulted in birds flopping around and shoving foil drip pans into a messed up heap in the front of the grill. Shut it all down, wrapped more string around the birds while on the grill, turned things back on.
- THEN, ran out of gas.
- THEN, checked 20-30 minutes after changing gas tanks to realize grill was only 250 degrees - the regulator was in shutdown mode. Turned everything off, slowly opened tank, opened valves, lit it, got back to expected temp range of 350-450 with just 2 burners.

1. Weber screwed up the design of the Genesis II, and having a rotisserie is purely an afterthought. Seriously, there is no clearance for any bird larger than about 5 pounds. Thankfully, on the E-410 you can fit 2 of them and still not be over the lit burners. If I had known it would be this bad, I would have asked for the kettle rotisserie, and not the one for the Genesis II.

2. Trussing is important. It was an afterthought and a mess yesterday. Thankfully, youtube and the web had the info, and I know what to do next time.

3. Browning is important. I liked the skin much better on the bird that had no drip pan under it to act as a heat deflector. I think next time, I will run the first 15 minutes of the cook with the center burners on low, no drip pan, then add the drip pan once the birds have a little more color.

All in all, the birds were edible, the squash I cooked for 20-25 minutes in a drip pan full of chicken drippings was really good, skin sucked, but I will do better next time.

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Comment

It all sounds familiar. Maybe the rotisserie can be rigged to use on the kettle. Now that I think about it the bones on the rib roast caused a problem on each rotation. I think it was the roast and not the chicken that destroyed the drip pan.

I posted the same thing on your SUWYC post, but I suggest using a simple technique for trussing by Jacques Pepin. It works great on the rotisserie, I've never had a failure since switching to it several years ago....

That Summit sure has a MUCH MUCH better thought out rotisserie setup than the new Genesis II series. The Genesis II just has it way way too low. I shouldn't have to remove the grates to barely clear the flavorizer bars with a chicken...

I just used a rotisserie for the first time on Saturday night and had the same issue with trussing. Did not expect it to take as long as it did, as I kept screwing it up. Eventually found that Jacques Pepin video and after some fumbling around got something that I considered "good enough".

I was using a Cajun Bandit with a battery operated by motor on my Weber Performer. Clearance definitely not an issue with that thing. The charcoal baskets are in the front and back, mostly hidden in the photo below. Foil pan with potatoes and onions below the birds to cook in the drippings. Results were good, but should have been better. I didnt have a chance to let the birds sit in the fridge on a wire rack before cooking and I slightly overcooked them. But my 21 month old son devoured what I gave him, so I consider it a victory for a first attempt.

On Friday I showed up and my buddy's house for dinner and he had a chicken on the rotisserie. I noticed he had the lid propped open with a brick and whole lemons shoved inside the bird. His plan was to spin it until the chicken started falling off the bone, "just to be safe" he explained. It was then that I took over the operation. I noticed his motor was on upside down and once I corrected that the lid was able to fully close. Fortunately, I slipped my thermopen into my pocket before I headed over. I pulled the chicken at the appropriate time and carved it at the table. The lemons did nothing as they were whole but the chicken was moist and tender.

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I had to laugh seeing you wipe out the Thermapen say, "out of the way, I got this !!", proceed to save the day, spin that TP around like a 6 gun and re-holster it.....with a smile on your face of course

Attjack I have done exactly that same thing. I've had my thermapen in my pocket a couple of times when going to eat at someone else's house - most recently at my Dad's, when I knew he was making steak. He likes his stuff well done cardboard style. I whipped out the Thermapen and told him when to take mine off (just over 135). I bought him a Thermapop for Christmas this past year.

About this website. AmazingRibs.com is all about the science of barbecue, grilling, and outdoor cooking, with great BBQ recipes, tips on technique, and unbiased equipment reviews. Learn how to set up your grills and smokers properly, the thermodynamics of what happens when heat hits meat, as well as hundreds of excellent tested recipes including all the classics: Baby back ribs, spareribs, pulled pork, beef brisket, burgers, chicken, smoked turkey, lamb, steaks, barbecue sauces, spice rubs, and side dishes, with the world's best buying guide to barbecue smokers, grills, accessories, and thermometers, edited by Meathead.

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